The Business of Research RCA and the VideoDisc [Hardcover]

This book looks at how RCA shaped a sophisticated consumer electronics technology in a research and development effort that spanned fifteen years.The introduction of the VideoDisc represented RCA's ill-fated effort to recapture innovation-based leadership after a decade of successors to David Sarnoff who attempted corporate growth through unrelated diversification and acquisition.The introduction of the VideoDisc represented RCA's ill-fated effort to recapture innovation-based leadership after a decade of successors to David Sarnoff who attempted corporate growth through unrelated diversification and acquisition.The story of the RCA VideoDisc is a rare inside look at a company and the way it conducts the complex process of science-based innovation. The author examines how RCA shaped a sophisticated consumer electronics technology in a research and development effort that spanned fifteen years. We see how the company's history, its structure, its technical capability, and its competition all influenced the choices that were made in moving VideoDisc from laboratory to development group to market, and ultimately to withdrawal from the marketplace. Published in hardcover as RCA and the VideoDisc.Editors' preface; Preface and acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Selectavision VideoDisc: opportunity and risk; 2. David Sarnoff: industrial entrepreneur; 3. Research as prime mover; 4. Laboratory as entrepreneur: videoplayer research begins; 5. Selectavision Holotape: RCA's professional innovation; 6. Everything ventured; 7. All in the family; 8. VideoDisc in the public eye; 9. RCA's 'Manhattan Project'; 10. On the market; 11. Managing R&D: lessons from RCA; Appendix; Notes; Index. The history she presents is essentially a tale of management. Yet it will be valuable to historians of technology in heightening our sensitivity to corporate policies and politics that affect the conduct of industrial R&D. Technology and Culture Margaret Graham offers an absorbing insiló@